Old Memories Through New Eyes

 February 2, 2022

Not long ago, in light of the #MeToo movement, I thought about the fact that I was lucky I had never experienced sexual harassment in the workplace.  I remember having a conversation about it with a friend of mine, since the issue was all anyone seemed to be talking about at the time.  I empathized with women who had experienced it, and was duly indignant on their behalf.  I said that no one had ever subjected me to anything like that before...except, they had.  I had experienced it, but I didn't realize it at the time--couldn't put that name to it.  Another friend of mine had said he thought the #MeToo movement all had gotten out of hand, and why did it take some women 20 years to report it if it had really been traumatizing?  How was it possible that people were only just realizing that abuse was abuse ? The speculation was that women were simply jumping on a bandwagon for attention, but hadn't really been traumatized by what they were claiming as harassment in retrospect. But I get it.  In the novel 1984, the government attempts to shrink the language in order to minimize the possibility of articulating, or even thinking about, rebellion.  How can you acknowledge it if you can't name it, can't recognize a context for how to label it?  What I experienced as a young college student was an assistant manager who lived by the 'boys will be boys' attitude--everything was just fun and games.  It wasn't assault; I didn't fear losing my job because of it, but by today's standards, what he subjected girls to in that place of business would absolutely be grounds for firing.  I didn't know, though.  Back then, we reserved that term for overt shows of force or threats to employment, not all the subtle ways harassment can manifest.  I knew he was inappropriate, but I also assumed my only recourse was to have a sense of humor about it, to give him wide berth, and to try not to find myself alone in the stock room with him.

Even more recently, I was talking with a friend about my home life as a child.  There was domestic abuse, but although I was witness to it, I was not the recipient.  Even writing that seems too black and white; I rarely say that what I witnessed was domestic abuse.  It didn't happen all the time.  It only happened when he was really stressed. There was only one time that I know of that it was bad enough for the police to become involved.  There were no broken bones.  But that's how we rationalize, right?  That's how people stay in those situations, sometimes until it's too late.  And then as we continued talking, my friend and I, I recounted a couple of other stories. The times he held us underwater in the pool until we couldn't breathe, fighting and kicking to come up for air, terrified of drowning.  The times he locked us kids in a room with him individually for hours at a time to lecture and intimidate us.   The way his anger led him to send subtle and not-so-subtle signs of destructive consequences when he did not get his way. The way he tried to wield his power to drive a divide among family members.  My friend, who continued to ask questions, finally asked me if I thought I had come from a background of abuse.  My immediate reaction was no, and he asked me why.  Again, I said I had only witnessed it, but not been the recipient.  Even as I was saying it, juxtaposed to the examples I had just given of some of my dad's behaviors, for the first time it began to dawn on me that I wasn't in proximity to it; I too lived it. I didn't name it because I always thought of myself as lucky that it wasn't bruises or broken bones--the face of abuse-, and therefore I couldn't name it for what it was.  At 54 years of age, I finally acknowledged that just because it wasn't as bad as many people experience, it doesn't make me 'lucky' to have endured that abuse.  No one should have to.